Earlier this month, Bromley Woodcraft Folk Elfins group visited the Horniman.

Their leader, Tracy, had recently taken part in our Community Training, and used what she'd learnt to plan a series of themed visits for her group. To start, she planned a session that included looking at the Benin Bronzes in the Hands on Base, exploring the Discovery Boxes in family groups, and doing some art and craft activities.

From our point of view it was a wonderful session - we had 28 souls on site from Bromley and Greenwich, Lewisham Folk. We had children as young as 1 and up to 11 years old.

The families really participated in the session and it was lovely to see parents working with their children. The children were very responsive and joined in really quickly which I think had a lot to do with the environment.

I am glad I attended the training as having been in the position of the participants helped me relate to their learning and it made me feel much more confident about the session.

- Tracy

Some of the group members also shared their thoughts on the visit.

You should really go to the Horniman Museum, and I mean it!!! With this museum you’ll never get bored.
When we went to the Horniman Museum we made some plaques, we touched some weird bits and bobs and we went outside and saw animals, music things and lots of different kinds of plants and we didn’t even explore half of the museum! So you see, you really should go to the Horniman Museum to see all its incredible features.

- Ben

We were led into quite a big room for something called Hands on Base. We sat on the floor on the carpet and the adults on chairs. A very friendly person called Rachel told us that she worked at the museum and was in charge of our session. She was very helpful and told us what a plaque was, for later we were doing a clay family inspired plaque. Also, she said that the Hands on Base is special because it is one of the few rooms where you can touch and hold things. This got me quite excited! We were allowed to look around and take things out of their boxes, which was also fun because there were loads of weird masks and puppets.
Then we the left the Hands on Base for a walk around the Horniman gardens for inspiration on our family inspired plaques. We all got a little bit carried away with the incredible musical instruments! Afterwards we all met inside again to start making our clay models. They all looked unbelievable!
Finally, we finished off with a little juice and biscuits. It was my best trip to the Horniman Museum, EVER!”

- Hanifah

We're very excited to be a finalist for the Art Fund Prize for the Museum of the Year. On Friday last, we were delighted to welcome the judges for their visit to the Horniman.

Starting at the clocktower, we brought them on a tour along the front of the building which neatly shows our history - from Frederick Horniman's original gift to our unique learning spaces.

The tour continued into the gardens, exploring our materials, food, dye and medicine gardens, highlighting how we're making connections between the plants growing there and objects in our collections.

The judges then had some time to explore our galleries and aquarium and meet some of our staff.

Later, we explained what made 2012 such a special year at the Horniman: re-launching our gardens, the Body Adorned exhibition, the Big Dance Picnic, our Christmas Fayre, our project with Abbey Manor College - the list goes on!

To close the visit, we showed the judges this video made with our fantastic visitors who tell us why we're their museum of the year.

The winner of the Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year is announced on 4 June.

With the Museum of the Year Photography Competition in full swing, we thought we'd gather together some inspirational shots from the Horniman's Flickr group.

These beautiful shots were all shared by our visitors. You can click on any photograph to view it in Flickr.

We'd love your entries in the competition to really capture what the spirt of the Horniman means to you. Perhaps that is a view of your favourite gallery.

The Natural History Gallery by Photogriffo

Or the new life springing up in the gardens.

Purple Haze by Adam Swaine

Or perhaps you like to get your lens a little closer to the collections.

Chortle by Bob MacCallum

Maybe what means the most is seeing your family enjoying their day out.

Henry at the Horniman by Giles Booth

Whatever you choose as your subject, we hope you can find some photographic inspiration at the Horniman.

Neither jelly nor fish by Owen Llewellyn

You can enter your own Horniman shots to the Museum of the Year Photography Competition for the chance to win an iPad mini and a year's National Art Pass.

Enter by filling in an online form, emailing the Art Fund at photo@artfund.org (make sure to include your name, title of the photography and the name of the museum), or sending it via twitpic @artfund.

The deadline for entres is the 15 May.

Click here to find out more and read full terms and conditions

Last week, the artists behind the Rain Room paid a visit to the Horniman to prepare for their newest work.

Thanks to the support of our fantastic visitors in the Museums at Night vote, rAndom International will be contributing a new installation to our event, The Horniman Garden Party.

In preparation, the group have toured the Horniman to get a real feel for the place and explore the spaces available.

The Horniman Garden Party will be held on 16 May 2013, as part of Museums at Night. To enjoy rAndom International's installation, live music, poetry, alternative museum tours and much more, book your tickets online.

Over the last few months, the Collections People Stories project has been reviewing the Anthrpology Collections under the them of 'Food Drink and Feasting'. As part of this, we invited a number of historians and anthropologists who have studied this area to respond to our stored collections.

As a result of our work we are hosting a series of talks at the museum between April and July 2013.

Public talks were an important part of the Horniman Museum’s early history. During the first few decades of the 20^th century local residents flocked to the Horniman in great numbers to listen to wide diversity of talks giving by prominent anthropologists and naturalists of the day. Topics were eclectic and varied but always connected to the museum’s collections. Early talks included ‘Marine Aquarium’ (1904), ‘Magic and Primitive Societies’ (1905), ‘Why and How we Study Mankind’ (1911) to the ‘Languages of the World’ (1913).

The focus of the 2013 Horniman Talks is on Food, Drink and Feasting. In typical Victorian style, our anthropology collections are stored by type, and we  have a separate storeroom dedicated to food and drink related objects from all around the world. Our documentation teams have been making their way through this room over the past few months, documenting and photographing objects as they go. You can follow their finds on the Tumblr blog.

Given the close history between the Horniman Museum and the tea trade, it may come as no surprise that we have over 600 tea related objects in our collections. In April, Helen Saberi, well known writer on Afghan cuisine and history of tea responds to some of our tea related collections, focusing on Tea Drinking Along the Silk Road. A selection of teas will be available to taste on the night.

In May, Dr Andy Mills will provide a fresh insight into Western Polynesian food culture and the relationship between food and chiefly power and status, drawing off our strong Pacific collections.

In June, we have two talks. First, Dr. Monica Janowski extends her research of the food memories of a group of elderly Polish migrants, who spent time in exile in Africa and Siberia during WWII, now living in London.

In our second June talk, food anthropologist, Dr. Kaori O’ Connor explores the unexpectedly complex and surprising cultural history of gingerbread in Europe.

Our final talk in July will see Professor Harry West, convener of the very popular SOAS Food Studies Centre, present ‘Stories of Cheese-Making Told by its Tools’. A selection of cheese will be available to taste on the night.

These talks run from 7–8pm. Doors open 6.30pm. Booking and entry are free.

To book, email communitylearning@horniman.ac.uk or call 020 8291 8686.

After sharing how the Collections People Stories project has been exploring some of our Tibetan objects, Tom, our Assistant Curator of Anthropology, shares more of his behind the scenes work with this collection.

Dr Akong Tulku Rinpoche, a revered Tibetan religious figure, visited the Horniman Museum stores last Wednesday. He was keen to see a selection of our large collection of Tibetan religious objects. It was an honour to meet him and we learned a great deal.

We have lots of small statues of Buddha and bodhisattvas, as well as different deities and little models of reliquaries called chorten.

Both the statues and the chorten models are hollow and originally they would have been filled with a sacred combination of different materials, such as prayers on paper, dried flowers, the remains of saints and semi precious stones. Some of our objects are still filled, whilst others have been emptied.

Dr Akong Tulku Rinpoche was in London to oversee the painting, filling and blessing of 1000 statues of Buddha at the Samye Dzong centre in Bermondsey. At his suggestion, I went to Samye Dzong to observe all the processes which would have gone into the creation of the Horniman’s objects.

It was an impressive sight, a large group of volunteers, monks and nuns were painting and gilding the figures whilst two monks filled and sealed them.

After a herculanian effort all 1000 figures were completed, ready for the opening of a new shrine room on Monday.

The opening ceremony was an impressive sight, the shrine room was packed with devotees and Dr Akong Tulku Rinpoche was piped in by a bag piper! Samye Dzong’s parent monastery is in Scotland and has its own tartan, woven in the colours of the five Buddhist elements.

The inauguration prayers were moving and I felt grateful of the perspective which Samye Dzong had given to my work on our Tibetan collections.

You might remember Sarah's Collections People Stories update mentioning a few spoons. The team have been working under the theme of 'food and feasting', and knew they would come across some spoons somewhere, but no one quite knew just how many fascinating spoons we had!

Rachel, who is part of 'team Quick' has been working on our spoons from the stores, and has shared her personal favourites with us in a blog post about the review.

We don't have much information about some of these spoons in a our database yet, but the team are using the review to identify gaps in our knowledge and, hopefully, fill them in.

Yesterday, we asked you to tell us how you decorate your Easter Eggs. Here's a reply from Christian, who comes from near Salzburg in Austria, who tells us about Austrian Easter Egg traditions.

In Austria, we dye our eggs on the Thursday before Easter, which we call Grün Donnerstag (Green Thursday).

In the weeks running up to Easter, I save onion skins when I'm cooking. The eggs are boiled, along with the onion skins, which dyes them a chestnut colour. Sometimes we wrap a rubber band around the eggs horizontally and vertically which stops the dye going on the egg and creates a cross on the eggs.

Even though special Easter egg dyes in lots of colours can be bought in the shops, we still make some using the traditional way of using onion skins.

Hanging the decorated eggs on pussy willow is also very traditional in the Karwoche Holy week (week before Easter Sunday).

On Easter Sunday, we play a game with the eggs called Eier pecken which means egg-pecking.

Two people each take an egg, holding it in their hands, with one person hitting the pointed end of their egg onto the others. Then we swap and hit the flatter end. The person whose egg is intact is the winner and wins the other person's eggs.

You may remember that, last year, we had some wonderful, colourful Easter Eggs from Romania on display in the museum.

The eggs - which are currently on display at Valance House Museum in Dagenham and Vestry House Museum in Walthamstow - were decorated with many colours and patterns.

This year, in the run up to our Easter Fair, we're wondering about your traditions of Easter Egg painting - how do you decorate yours?

Go to Flickr and leave a comment, tweet us or leave a comment on facebook and tell us how you decorate your eggs.

A few weeks ago we shared our new Tumblr blog, Museumpics: we've loved seeing Instagrammed shots from museums all over the world, so we've started an Instagram account of our own!

Our account is used by staff from across the museum and gardens, so it'll give you a peek into what goes on behind-the-scenes all over the Horniman.

Lately, we've had plenty of shots from our Entomology Bioblitz, some interesting Conservation projects, and a bit of Pangolin fever!

As usual, we'd love you to share your photos from the Horniman with us. You're free to take photographs (without a flash) throughout the galleries and gardens. Remember to tag your shots with #horniman or #hornimanmuseum so we can spot them, and our favourites might even end up on our Pinterest board.